The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Network management systems are used to remotely monitor computer networks. Network management may be defined as the capability to control and monitor a computer network from a central location. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has defined a conceptual model for describing the key functional areas of network management which include the following:
Fault Management: Provides facilities that allow network managers to discover faults in managed devices, the network, and network operation, to determine their cause and to take remedial action. To enable this, fault management provides mechanisms to: Report the occurrence of faults, log reports, perform diagnostic tests, and correct faults (possibly automatically).
Configuration Management: Monitors network configuration information so that the effects of specific hardware and software can be managed and tracked. Configuration management may provide the ability to initialize, reconfigure, operate and shut down managed devices.
Accounting: Measures network utilization of individual users or groups to: Provide billing information, regulate users or groups, and help keep network performance at an acceptable level.
Performance Management: Measures various aspects of network performance including the gathering and analysis of statistical data about the system so that it may be maintained at an acceptable level. Performance management provides the ability to: obtain the utilization and error rates of network devices, provide a consistent level of performance by ensuring that devices have a sufficient capacity.
Security Management: Controls access to network resources so that information cannot be obtained without authorization by: Limiting access to network resources, providing notification of security breaches and attempts.
Currently available network management systems suffer from numerous disadvantages and problems. Typically these systems are designed to work with only one protocol or one hardware platform and include software that is hard coded, making them inflexible, of limited scalability and use, especially with the numerous different enterprise critical systems used in modem businesses and enterprises. Solutions and systems do not exist to effectively and efficiently manage the disparate information technology infrastructure and systems in common use today. For example, finding a network management system to cost effectively manage disparate enterprise systems that include numerous types of communications protocols, software applications, telecommunication systems, servers, routers and other critical systems is impossible with available solutions and service providers.
The emergence and implementation of sophisticated information technology infrastructure elements not directly involved in packet routing and switching has dramatically increased the requirements of what is required to remotely monitor and manage such infrastructure. Traditional network management systems do not have the capability or flexibility to survive in this environment. The need to monitor and manage not only network metrics and performance but enterprise and mission-critical applications, including the capability to monitor any layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) network model, implemented on disparate systems and platforms, further complicate the capability of existing network management systems to be modified to perform such functions.
Current systems do not have the capability or flexibility to effectively monitor and manage a complex IT infrastructure. Further, the wide-variety of available and deployed network and application protocols prevent existing network management systems from monitoring and managing IT infrastructure utilizing a number of different management protocols.